Roads We Choose
by DreamBrother
Summary: High school can be a pretty crappy place for kids of any generation. Rated T for language. Written for ALEO in the Summer 2008 Numb3rs Gen Fic Exchange over at LJ.


**Disclaimer: **Numb3rs is not mine.

**A/N: **Written for ALEO in the Summer 2008 Numb3rs Gen Fic Exchange (wow, that's a mouthful of a title) over at LJ. Apologies for any errors that might exist regarding police protocol.

Also, I do not condone the actions of the main OC in this fic and apologize in advance for Officer Hammond – he just came out that way! ;-)

Rated T for some minor language.

* * *

**Roads We Choose**

"What do we have?" Don asked as soon as he opened the door of his SUV and got out.

The only one from his team on the scene, at least for now, the exposition that was normally David's role had to be handled by the LADP officer on the scene, Officer Hammond.

"High school kid, bag full of pipe bombs, using his girlfriend as a human shield in the main hallway," replied Officer Hammond as he lead Don to the small, make-shift command centre that had propped up between white-and-blue patrol cars forming a line in front of the school's main entrance.

"And we found out about this how?"

"Girlfriend found out what the guy was up to, managed to send a text to her mom who raised the alarm. Evacuation procedures got the kids in the front part of the school out before the bomber noticed. We've got him cornered, uniforms at the end of the hallway; we just have to make sure he doesn't blow himself up, along with his little lady and my men."

"Alright. Negotiation time. What do we know about him?"

Officer Hammond pointed to a suit-wearing man about fifteen feet away who was talking to another police officer. "That's the school principal, Jeremy Woods. Said that HT is one Alex May, a junior-year, one of the smartest kids in school and A's in just about every subject save English and Gym." Hammond looked up from the notebook he was reading from. "Sounds like your normal I'm-so-smart-I-can't-take-it-anymore kinda loonies."

"Thanks, Officer, appreciate that," Don replied. "I think I'd like a word with the principal myself."

As they walked towards the man in question, Don had further questions.

"How far is SWAT?"

"At least twenty minutes. They've been caught up in some sort of emergency downtown; they'll be here as soon as they can. Plus, it's going to take them time to get into position and draw a bead on the kid."

"Let's just try to resolve this one without blowing the kid's brains out, yeah?" Don murmured, as much to himself as to Hammond.

Nearing the principal, Don stuck out his hand. "Mr. Woods? I'm Special Agent Don Eppes, I'm with the FBI. Can you tell me why you think your student decided to want to blow up his school and friends?"

"I don't know, Agent, but I _can_ tell you Alex doesn't have many friends. The girl he's holding hostage is pretty much his only one in the school - Jamie Murray. They've been neighbours for quite a while."

"Are there any recent events or happenings that you know of that might have triggered such a response in May?"

The man shrugged, clearly out of his element when his students decided to lay down a pen and pick up a bomb. His school had been situated in one of the better parts of town, where guns and drugs and internal friction wasn't so much seen as heard about from other schools - this kind of situation was well out of the principal's comfort zone, and his body language showed it through his hunched shoulders and crossed arms. "Not that I'm aware of. Alex had been made to see the school's guidance counsellor a few times over the last year but nothing came up that screamed mass murderer." The principal finished his sentence with an edge of hysteria creeping into his voice, causing Don to immediately put up his hands in order to placate the harassed man.

"Sir, calm down. No one's pointing fingers here. We just want to make sure everybody gets out of this alive, including Alex May and his girlfriend and to do that, we need to know a little about him."

"Well… he's one of the smartest kids in the school, even though he's a junior. And he skipped a grade so that means he's the youngest in his class as well. He's not involved in any sports but he did try out for the school band, I believe, but quit after a while." Woods stopped speaking as he looked out at the mass of police cars and ambulances crowding his school's parking lot.

"What about his home life – can you tell us anything about that?"

"Uhhh… I think his mother is a career woman, works full time at one of the multinationals downtown. Father was a former Marine, works for some private security firm now. No siblings, I think. Jamie really is the closest thing he has to a friend or a sister or anything, really. I don't know why he's not letting her go."

Officer Hammond spoke up at this point. "My men inside tell me that when they were approaching, the girl was trying to convince him to put down the bag with bombs and to give himself up, along with shouting at my guys to not shoot him."

Woods shrugged. "Like I said, they are very close – which is why I don't understand his wanting to harm her."

"Well, it's part of our job to find out, sir, thank you for your help." Don turned away from the Principal and started walking back towards his SUV. "My team should be here in about five minutes – when they get here, apprise them of the situation. I'm going inside."

"Yes, sir. I'll get you a vest and radio." Hammond started speaking into the small radio on left shoulder before he realized that the FBI guy was walking away from the school entrance. He watched the man go to the passenger side door of his car and suddenly noticed that there was another person in the vehicle.

"Hey Chuck," Don said as Charlie rolled the window all the way down, putting his hands and elbows on the door sill. "I'm going to be here a while, why don't you call a cab and go home?"

"What are you going to do?"

"Just gonna have a little chat with the kid inside, see if I can get him to come out quietly."

"You're going to _go _inside?"

"That's the plan."

"Don, the kid has a bag full of pipe bombs."

"I know, I know. But it's not that surprising, considering you can find videos online telling you how mak-."

"That wasn't my point," Charlie interrupted.

Don exhaled deeply. "I know. But I'm still going inside. Colby and David should be here soon, and so will SWAT. The situation is under control – go home."

"Don, I'm not going home while you're here."

Don made an effort not to sigh again. "Why doesn't that surprise me? Fine. Stay here, but don't, under any circumstance, cross the line of patrol cars, you hear me?"

"Got it."

"Good. Now stay put. There's some pen and paper in the dashboard, go crazy."

With that, Don patted the door twice and walked back to where Officer Hammond held a vest in his hand.

"No point of the vest, Officer, it's not like it's going to help any if a bomb does go off."

"Your call," Hammond replied as he watched Don put the radio's ear-piece in his left ear and clipped the small, black receiver to the back of his belt. One of his eyebrows lifted in surprise as Don unholstered his gun and tucked it into the waistband of pants, at his back, making sure his black shirt covered it all.

"Taking a huge risk, aren't you? No vest, no gun?"

"I do have a gun; the kid just doesn't have to see it. Besides, if it's going to be a question of who's got the most firepower, I think the kid knows who the winner is."

Hammond nodded before offering a slight smile. "Good luck, Agent Eppes. We've got your back."

* * *

Don had only come back to high school once or twice since he'd graduated Pasadena High back in '88. The last he'd walked through the doors of a high school, he'd been confronted with the bodies of teenagers lining the hallway, blood pools reaching abandoned books and backpacks and spent bullet casings. He just hoped that this time around, the school wouldn't have to call in a crime scene clean up crew to scrape the blood off the walls and doors.

Taking care to keep his hands up and in full view of the person he was about to confront, Don used his hips to open the glass doors, swivelling his head from facing a sea of patrol cars and emergency vehicles and uniformed men and women to the wealth of lockers lining each wall, harsh fluorescent lighting from above replacing sunlight, illuminating a scared kid holding another kid hostage, both of them looking with suspicion at Don the newcomer.

"Mr. May? My name's Don Eppes, I'm with the FBI. I just want to talk to you."

Tall and gangly would be the two best words to describe the kid in front of him – he may not have been football material but Don had a feeling the basketball coach had probably tried to woo this kid to the sport once upon a time. The girl around whose neck he'd wrapped an arm hardly came up to his shoulders. Don looked her over quickly, noting that though the blonde teenager looked petrified, she didn't look physically harmed in any way and though he couldn't be sure, Don suspected that she was actually leaning _back_ into her captor.

"I do not want to talk to anyone!"

Don, careful to keep his hands in full view, quickly exchanged a look with the LAPD officers on the opposite end of the hallway, guns drawn and making certain that May had no choice but to remain where he was or to leave through the front doors. The kid was trapped.

"I understand, but I want to talk to you."

"You do not have anything worth saying," came the immediately reply followed by a suspicious look. "Are you a shrink?"

At that, Don had to smile. "No, not at all. Far from it, actually. I'm just a regular G-man."

"Here to make the loonie go to jail and save the day, right?"

"Look kid, I'm just here to make sure you don't do anything I know you're going regret."

"Oh yeah, and how are you going to do that? You shoot me and my fingers press the trigger," Alex waved around the pipe bomb in his right hand, "and the school will be in need of some rebuilding."

"No one wants to shoot you. Look, no gun," Don tilted his hip slightly to show the empty holster.

"Says you, what about the Dirty Harry's behind me?"

"They haven't done anything yet, have they? How about a deal? You let the girl go; I'll get the uniforms to leave. It'll be just you and me then."

"She betrayed me!" The vehemence behind the boy's tone almost had Don ducking to protect himself from an explosion he felt was imminent. A quick glance at the girl told Don that though she looked terrified, she seemed almost hurt by the accusation.

"That's the way you see it," Don argued. "Doesn't seem like betrayal to me – if she was really didn't care about you, she would have hung around. It's easier to warn and safer to warn people when you're a hundred feet away, not with a text." Don began to shuffle forward with minute steps, leaving the comfort and safety of the door behind him.

"That's not the point!"

"No Alex, the point is that she didn't want you to do something you're going to regret for the rest of your life – if you even have a life considering you're holding enough explosives to turn this part of the school into rubble."

"I don't care – I _hate_ my life."

"You're in high school, kid. Who doesn't hate his life when he's high school?"

"Are you _mocking_ me?"

Don almost laughed. The kid was holding a damn pipe bomb in his hand and worrying about people mocking him. "No, I'm agreeing with you a hundred percent. Trust me, no-one likes high school, hardly anyone. The jocks are worried their going to break a leg, miss the sport season and not get a scholarship to college, the cheerleaders worry they're not going to make the team, the smart kids try to fit in and get into Ivies and away from this hellhole. You're not the only person who has wanted to blow his school up, but you _are_ one of the few who've actually tried – and I want you to see what a bad idea that is. Life gets a hell of a lot better after your graduate, trust me. And blowing yourself up, your friend, your school mates and teachers is not the way."

"Please. I've heard all this shit before. People are assholes in school, they are assholes out there. College and after will be just the same, nothing but people ragging on me, just because I'm smarter than they are."

"That's where you're wrong. I'm speaking from experience, from seeing it happen with my very eyes." Don motioned slightly for the uniformed cops at the other end of the hallway to step back a bit, causing Alex to suddenly whip his head around to see what they were up to. Satisfied at their distance, Alex looked back at Don.

"Oh yeah? How's that?"

"My brother. You think being a junior at 16 is hard? Trying being a college freshman at 13, before you even hit puberty. He hated high school but he got over it and look at him now – tenured professor at a university, has a book on the bestseller list, a bunch of prizes and most of all, well-respected in his field and beyond." Don inched closer, closing the distance between him, Alex and Jamie to a mere fifteen feet. "So yeah, I know what I'm talking about when I say having a sucky time in high school is going to be nothing but a blip on your radar later on. But what you're doing right now… you're just throwing your life away."

Don could literally see the kid mull over this piece of information as he began to shuffle his weight from foot to foot. "Brother, huh? What did you say your name was, again?"

"Don Eppes."

"So you're Charles Eppes's brother huh? Of CalSci?"

"The one and only. So what do you say you put the bombs down and we talk about your options without the threat of being blown into pieces?"

Alex began shaking his head. "No. I'm not leaving here."

"I'm going to tell it to you straight, man. The longer we stay here without the people outside knowing what's going on, the twitchier they are going to get. The last thing any of us want is for a SWAT sniper to put a bullet through your head. So give me something to work with here."

Don received no reply and after a minute of waiting was about to say something himself when Alex unhooked his arm from around Jamie's neck. Since she didn't start to run away from Alex immediately, Don figured he was either holding her from the back of her shirt, or the girl was more suicidal and crazy-in-love than he first thought.

"If you get Starsky and Hutch to leave and you stay, I'll let Jamie leave too," Alex bargained.

Don jumped on the opportunity immediately. "Deal. Guys, get out of here. And take the girl with you."

Manoeuvring so that by the time the two cops and Jamie left through the double-doors Don had entered from, Don now stood much closer to Alex, both men with their backs to the lockers that lined each side of the hallway.

"So it's just you and me now, Alex. What's it gonna be?"

"What do you mean?"

Don shrugged. "You can't exactly stay here forever with a bag full of bombs that might explode any minute. And you don't even like this place. So if I were you, I'd put the bag and the bomb in your hand down, and we both walk out of here and let the bomb squad deal with it."

"I'll go to jail."

"That's a distinct possibility, I won't say no. But you have many things working in your favour. You're young. Yeah, you've scared the shit out of a whole lot of people but you haven't hurt anyone, at least not yet. And I don't think you're a cold-blooded killer, I think you did this out of a fit of emotion, and I think the DA and jury will see that." Don shrugged again. "Your life's not over yet, but it will be if your finger twitches on that detonator, that's for sure."

"I don't _want_ to go to jail," Alex all but whined.

"You don't want to die, either. Death is one thing you can't come back from and I don't think you're ready to go just yet. And you don't want to be a murderer." Don bit his lip as he noticed that the hand holding a pipe bomb had begun shaking violently. He also panicked slightly when the kid began sliding down the wall of lockers until he sat on his floor, his knees up, the duffel bag presumably loaded with more bombs _thunking _as it came to a rest on the floor beside him.

Alex was silent again and Don had to resist the urge to look at his watch, guessing correctly that such a gesture probably wouldn't go over well with the emotionally overloaded kid.

Don almost missed the whisper when it came, a few minutes later: "I wish I could go back to this morning."

"Yeah. I know you do." Don ventured a step forward, both literally and metaphorically. "You ready to leave?"

Alex didn't respond directly but his action of putting the pipe bomb he held in his hand on top of the bag spoke volumes. He then stood up and shoved his now empty hands into his front jeans pockets, crossing the hall until he stood in the middle.

Don quickly closed the distance between them, reaching a hand behind his bag to grab his cuffs, a bit taken aback when looking at the kid, Alex seemed even younger than sixteen. "I have to hand-cuff you now, alright?" Alex nodded morosely and took his hands out of his pockets.

As Don closed the metal ring in place, the kid spoke up. "Did your brother really hate high school?"

Don smiled. "Oh yeah. With a passion. Tell you what, he's waiting outside for me, I'll introduce you to him myself."

"That'll be nice."

**Khatum (The End)**

* * *


End file.
